Colour
A colour, chosen from a picker rather than typed.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Data:
- Datastores — the datastore, then Table Designer to add or edit a field
What it stores
A colour value, in a form that can be used directly wherever the colour is applied — a status pill, a calendar entry, a chart series, a theme.
When to use it
- Categorisation people will see — status colours, category colours, calendar colours.
- Branding, where a tenant or a product carries its own colour.
- Chart series, where a consistent colour per category makes reports readable.
Colour must not be the only signal
The accessibility point, and it applies every time. Around one man in twelve has some form of colour vision deficiency, and red against green — the most common status pairing there is — is precisely the one that fails.
Always pair colour with something else: a label, an icon, a position. A status shown only as a coloured dot is unreadable to a real proportion of your users, and unreadable in print and in a black-and-white export.
Constrain the palette
Letting users pick any colour produces twelve statuses in twelve shades of blue, none distinguishable at a glance. Where colour carries meaning, a small fixed set works far better than free choice.
Consider whether a dropdown of named options is a better fit than a colour picker — it gives you consistency and a reportable value.
Check the contrast
A colour chosen for its appearance on a white background may be illegible as a pill with white text on it. If the colour will sit behind text, either constrain the choices to ones that work or ensure the text colour adapts.
Pale yellow with white text is a combination somebody will choose.
Colour meaning is not universal
Red for bad and green for good is a convention, not a law, and it does not hold everywhere. Where an application is used internationally, lean harder on labels.
Reporting on it is rarely useful
Grouping by colour is grouping by presentation, which usually means the real grouping field is missing. If you find yourself reporting on colour, the category itself should be a field and the colour should hang off it.
Worked example
A case datastore stores status as a dropdown and holds the colour on the status record rather than on each case. Cases display a coloured pill with the status name in it, so the colour helps people scan and the name carries the meaning. Reports group by status, never by colour.
Recommendations
- Never let colour be the only signal.
- Constrain the palette where colour carries meaning.
- Check contrast if text sits on the colour.
- Hang colour off the category, not off every record.